My friend called and said that sex saved him. He made me listento streets in the Philippines waking up in rain, panes and trees
repeating a low note of C—Chorister, cage, a choir capturesthe cadenza of falling cardamoms, then a quartz of quietude.
So eventually, it was the Q—Queer, he said, the parched skinof the quarryman, whom he loved briefly for an afternoon.
For so long, we’ve mistaken the Q for C, weeping, he then reciteda passage of Śūrangama Sūtra, an odd, phonetic transcription
from the Tang Dynasty. The power, he insisted, is in the sonance,not in its meaning, its attachment. This persistent, desperate,
loud howl of August is but the insects’ thirst for matingand survival. The naked nearness of a swimming pool pulses
in blue, so artificial it seems…